


Waergon

by marylex



Category: King Arthur (2004)
Genre: Bloodplay, Knifeplay, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-09-02
Updated: 2004-09-02
Packaged: 2017-10-06 20:28:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,239
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/57459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marylex/pseuds/marylex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dagonet would cut off his own hands before hurting those he loves, and he has the control to keep from doing it. So Tristan comes to Dagonet, and Dagonet touches him with care, even as the knife draws crimson trails along Tristan's body, pulls blood and sighs from him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waergon

There's no one else left who can be trusted with this task, and so Tristan comes to Dagonet, and Dagonet does the best he can to keep Tristan from slipping through their hands.

Bors has no taste for the stringier meat of his brother knights, Galahad no stomach for Tristan's needs. Lancelot and Gawain are both too dangerous - Lancelot too angry, even if he wasn't so wrapped up in Arthur, and Gawain too heedless in the heat of his own passions - and Tristan wouldn't say stop, wouldn't want them to stop. Dagonet would only end up washing Tristan's blood from their hands and trying to put all of them back together, in the end.

Dagonet would cut off his own hands before hurting those he loves, and he has the control to keep from doing it. So Tristan comes to Dagonet, and Dagonet touches him with care, even as the knife draws crimson trails along Tristan's body, pulls blood and sighs from him.

Exquisitely edged - as any weapon Tristan carries, any Dagonet wields - the knife is sharp enough to shave the hairs from a patch of skin below Tristan's throat, beneath the hollow where Dagonet bends and brushes his lips before poising the weapon's point on tender, newly exposed skin. Tristan shivers under the cold touch, like the quiver of a horse's sensitive flank, and Dagonet watches the blade rise and fall with the in-and-out of Tristan's breath before he presses down, sideways, leaving a shallow slice below Tristan's collarbone. Between his thighs, he feels Tristan's body tighten in an effort to remain motionless. He leaves a matching score on the other side of Tristan's chest, noting the catch of breath and the clench of fingers in the bedclothes, and he feels Tristan harden against his hip. He wonders what it feels like, the silver-splinter bite of the knife's point. Dagonet carries his own scars, but he never feels the wounds until after the battle.

Tristan's skin bears a map of whorls and spirals and crosses of older design than that belonging to Arthur's god, thin lines barely visible to the eye but evident to Dagonet's calloused fingers as he combs them through the hair on Tristan's chest, smoothes them over the laddered arch of Tristan's ribs and down to the points of his hips. A few lines that somehow form the face of a wolf were set in the hollow of Tristan's left hip before Dinidan's death, and Dagonet finds his lips drawn to the dead man's seal time and again as he traces fingers and steel across the planes of Tristan's body, as Tristan raises one leg to hook over Dagonet's shoulder. Dagonet's been reluctant to mark Tristan with his own totems and symbols, reluctant to leave behind images less familiar to Tristan, whose family fled so far east in their futile attempt to save their sons. Dagonet tries to bind Tristan to him, to them, tries keep him from ranging after Dinidan on one last journey, but as much as he would like to rub ashes into the wounds to leave more striking permanent marks, rather than washing them afterward with water and wine gone to vinegar, it's something he won't do. He's contented himself with shallow slices, soon healed, across the warm brown skin of Tristan's belly and flanks, his only real legacy on Tristan's body the scores that remain across his shoulder blades like primitive wings. He raises his eyes to watch the arch of Tristan's throat and has the sudden urge to sink his teeth into it, set his jaw into the curve where shoulder meets neck and bite down hard - but he restrains himself.

Dagonet is sure the solid dependability he holds to isn't as elegant or creative as Tristan might wish, precise but nevertheless missing the deadly grace and virtuosity of Tristan's battlefield death-dealing, missing even the devastating, stunning power Dagonet, himself, can command at times. But solidity and dependability are safest, a grounding Tristan seems to need when he appears at Dagonet's door and silently offers the knife. So Dagonet contents himself with turning his head to mouth the inside of Tristan's thigh, tracing lips and tongue along the lines left from previous encounters and watching the twist of Tristan's hips as Dagonet's beard scrapes against his skin.

Dagonet knows that anything and everything is a weapon, including the body of the man under him, well-forged and well-tempered, and he knows how to treat a weapon. You love what your life depends on. He knows how to care for it, how to keep it sharpened and shining so the blade won't notch or shatter, knows how far it can bend without breaking under the blows it catches, knows how blood eats away at the metal if it's not properly maintained.

He's steeped in tradition, enough to remember weapons made of more than dead steel, of more than iron ripped unbreathing from the womb of the earth. Dagonet wields steel now, and generally it serves, but he remembers good armour of hoof and arrowheads of horn and knives of bone that once lived and breathed, like the man under him. He thinks maybe that's what Tristan needs, his body crying out for its like, for the live blade.

Tristan gleams with sweat, and Dagonet rises on his knees over him and leans forward, one hand pressed against Tristan's chest to hold him down. The other hand runs the blade down Tristan's arm, around the swell of muscle to the curve inside his elbow, wine-dark blood welling, and the movement pulls a low keening sound out of the body beneath him. Tristan's hips are moving in a slow roll against Dagonet, the same loose-hipped sway that allows his steady stance in the stirrups as he nocks an arrow and draws his bowstring. As Dagonet watches, Tristan's eyes open, glittering dark in the growing dusk, meeting Dagonet's own. Tristan's teeth are digging into his lower lip, and Dagonet raises his hand from Tristan's body to skim fingertips along the marks on his face. Something tightens in his chest as Tristan turns his head into the touch, his cheek curving into Dagonet's palm, and Dagonet drops the knife to comb his other hand through Tristan's hair, fingers catching in tangles and braids.

It's Dagonet's duty to keep him alive, and the scars left from these encounters aren't so very different from the marks left on the young knights in training, marks that teach them to keep themselves alive. Better a friend to spill your blood in practice than an enemy in battle. Everything has a price, and often enough, that price is blood.

He can feel the pull of it through Tristan's flesh, running under his skin - the sacrifice she wants to claim for the gifts she gives, the bitch-goddess of Tristan's battlefield with the rest of her hunting dogs. She leads Tristan through the deadly dance with his foes, blesses him with her lethal hand, pulls him every day away from the rest of them and toward her, fills him with a need to become one of his own works of bloody art. So Dagonet performs this ritual, gives her the blood she demands, even as he pulls Tristan back from the edge, sheathing himself in Tristan's body, pulling Tristan up and against him as they move together.

Tristan comes to Dagonet because the final sacrifice won't be allowed - not while Dagonet lives.


End file.
